Blood Brothers: Among the Soldiers of Ward 57

This expert piece of journalism by a brave man about brave men follows three soldiers and a reporter through eighteen months on Ward 57, Walter Reed’s amputee wing (The Washington Post)

Time magazine’s Michael Weisskopf was riding through Baghdad in the back of a U.S. Army Humvee when he heard a metallic thunk. Looking down, he spotted a small object inches from his feet and reached down to take it in his hand. Then everything went black.

Weisskopf lost his hand and was sent to Ward 57 at Walter Reed Medical Center, the wing reserved for amputees. There he met soldiers Pete Damon, Luis Rodriguez, and Bobby Isaacs, alongside whom he navigated the bewildering process of recovery and began reconciling life before that day in Baghdad with everything that would follow his release.

Blood Brothers is the story of this difficult passage–a story that begins with healthy men heading off to war, and continues through the months in Ward 57 as they prepare for a different life than the one they left. A chronicle of devastation and recovery, this is a deeply affecting portrait of the private aftermath of combat casualties.